Opinion pieces, travel articles, places and people; lots of poetry; commentary on current events and history and whatever else shows up on the radar. Articles have been numbered (since Sept. 2004). Go n-eiri an t-adh leat.

Does she look good?She looks good. You,on the other hand, standlike an idiot, rooted to the spot."Ha, you, umblella," she smiles,so you, bumbling and stumbling,escort her to the Star Ferryfor which you pay all of 50 centsin a gentlemanly manner,aware of the inescapable factthat you may be smelling like a corpsewhile she, instead of day-old fish,smells of Guerlain.

"You, what name?", she smiles,and as you try to bloody well rememberyour heart goes pitty-pitty-patand a torrent of pain rolls over you,memories of Nanny and the nursery,the brittle coldness of Mama,the icy distance of Papa,the brusqueness of the boys at school,the cold sheets, the tearful nights.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

A pall of smoke and drifting ashhangs above the battered ruins of Baghdad;for four long days it has hung abovemounds of corpses and the hummingsounds of blowflies. It has cast a shadowon the wide meandering river, but by nowthe impassive horsemen, their work done,have casually moved along.

From an oven built of bricks, which takes upcorner space in a smouldering cellar shop,emerges, from cavernous thick cool depths,a child, wary and uncertain. It is a boy,tousle-haired, perhaps about nine or ten.He gazes upon the surrounding wreckageand sees the charred bodies of his parents,his two sisters. He climbs up to the street.

Tied to his robe by a thin rope is a pouchcontaining scraps of stale uneaten bread,an empty flask of water, four small silver coins.The street is grey and blurred under falling ashbut the heat and the stench, as they come onso suddenly, cause the child to cough and gag.He mutters a quick prayer, Allah, not that hismind, unformed, truly believes in any God.

Nothing moves. The collapsed huddled shapes,heaped, blackened and bloated, line the alleyways,and show themselves to be his neighbours,the people he has known since he was born.How … how could this have come to happen?It doesn’t seem right that complete strangers,people he has never even seen or heard of beforecan ride in on the wind and do such things.